Facts: Father and Mother are the unmarried parents of one daughter born in 2010. The juvenile court initially approved an agreed parenting plan giving each parent equal time with the child. In June 2021, at the parents’ request, the plan was modified to allow Mother to relocate to Arkansas with the child. After moving, the child lived primarily with Mother in Arkansas and spent one weekend a month, some holidays, and summers with Father in Tennessee.

About a year after the move, Father petitioned the Tennessee court to modify the parenting plan. He alleged several problems: Mother was routinely late or sometimes failed to show up for the scheduled custody exchanges in Tennessee, she wasn’t following the child’s medical treatment plan developed by the child’s doctors, and he feared the child was being exposed to domestic violence from Mother’s new husband. Father asked to be made the primary residential parent, effectively flipping the custody arrangement.

Mother responded by challenging the Tennessee court’s involvement. She argued Tennessee was an inconvenient forum under the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act (UCCJEA) and asked the court to either dismiss Father’s petition or transfer the case to Arkansas.

At that point, the child had lived in Arkansas for roughly 18 months. Mother argued that most evidence about the child’s current life—her school, doctor, church, friends, and extended family—was now in Arkansas.

Father opposed the transfer, pointing out that the child still had significant ties to Tennessee through her regular visits with him. He argued he could prove his case with testimony and evidence from Tennessee, without needing out-of-state witnesses, and emphasized that the Tennessee court was already familiar with the family’s history.

After a hearing, the Tennessee juvenile court denied Mother’s request to transfer the case to Arkansas. The judge considered the UCCJEA factors for an inconvenient forum and decided Tennessee remained the appropriate forum. The child’s roots in Tennessee and the court’s familiarity with the case outweighed Mother’s arguments, especially given the relatively short time the child had been in Arkansas.

Discovery sanctions against Mother resulted in Father receiving a default judgment. The case proceeded immediately to an uncontested proof hearing, where only Father presented evidence. Based on that proof, the trial court concluded that Father’s proposed parenting plan, which would make Father the primary parent and flip the old plan, was in the child’s best interest. The court adopted Father’s proposed plan “by default.”

Mother appealed.

On Appeal: The Court of Appeals affirmed most of the trial court’s decisions but vacated the modified parenting plan because the trial court

failed to conduct a required best-interest analysis before changing custody.

The UCCJEA governs subject-matter jurisdiction in interstate custody cases. Tennessee law provides that a Tennessee court that made the initial custody determination keeps “exclusive, continuing jurisdiction” over future custody modifications until certain conditions are met. One way Tennessee can lose jurisdiction is if neither the child nor a parent has a significant connection to Tennessee and significant evidence about the child’s care is no longer available in Tennessee. Another way is if everyone has moved out of Tennessee. Here, because Father still lives in Tennessee, only the first scenario was in play. Importantly, a child’s relocation alone doesn’t automatically strip a Tennessee court of jurisdiction under the UCCJEA; there must be a determination that Tennessee no longer has meaningful connections or evidence related to the child.

Mother’s jurisdiction argument turned on the claim that the child’s only remaining connection to Tennessee was a brief visit each month with Father, which she argued was not enough. The Court disagreed:

When Father filed his modification petition, the child had been living in Arkansas for just over a year. She lived the previous eleven years exclusively in Tennessee. The ties she formed during those eleven years were not yet lost. She still had family in Tennessee—Father, a stepmother, and a half-sibling. Father only exercised parenting time in Tennessee. Since the move, the child had spent two summers in Tennessee as well as multiple weekends and holidays. We find these ongoing connections with Tennessee to be significant.

We also have no difficulty concluding that substantial evidence is available in Tennessee relevant to the issues raised in the modification petition. Father alleged that Mother failed to ensure that the child received necessary medical care and therapies for her condition. Tennessee doctors diagnosed the child’s medical condition and recommended a treatment plan. Thus, relevant evidence about the child’s medical condition was locally available. Father and his wife could testify about their observations of the child’s physical condition after the move. Father complained that Mother was repeatedly late or absent at child exchanges. These events occurred in Tennessee. He also raised concerns about domestic violence between Mother and her new husband. A similar issue arose while Mother and the child were living in Tennessee, prompting the last modification decision. Certainly, other relevant evidence may originate in Arkansas, but substantial evidence remains available here.

The Court of Appeals held that those connections and evidence were substantial, so the Tennessee court had subject-matter jurisdiction to proceed.

Mother next argued that, even if Tennessee had jurisdiction, the Juvenile Court should have declined to exercise it because Tennessee was an inconvenient forum compared to Arkansas. Tennessee’s UCCJEA allows a court to decline jurisdiction if it finds another state is a more appropriate forum, considering several factors such as how long the child has lived out of state, the distance and financial burden, where the evidence and witnesses are, any domestic violence, and which court is more familiar with the case. Here, the trial judge reviewed those statutory factors and concluded that most pointed to keeping the case in Tennessee.

The Court of Appeals found no abuse of discretion in that decision:

We conclude that the court made a reasonable decision on these facts. As the court noted, the child had only lived outside the state for a relatively short time. For the previous eleven years, she lived exclusively in Tennessee where she still had significant connections. True, some relevant evidence was likely to originate in Arkansas. Still, the court decided that there was more evidence in Tennessee “at this point in the proceedings.” The Tennessee court had presided over multiple custody disputes between these parties, the most recent of which involved a similar domestic violence issue….So it was more familiar with the relevant facts and issues than an Arkansas court. And it was well equipped to address any new domestic violence concerns.

Finally, Mother challenged the custody modification itself, arguing the trial court erred by changing the parenting plan without conducting a proper best-interest analysis. In Tennessee, modifying a permanent parenting plan is a two-step process: (1) the court must find a material change in circumstances since the last plan, and (2) if there is a material change, the court must determine whether the modification is in the child’s best interests by considering the relevant statutory best-interest factors. Even if a parent is in default, the court still must go through these steps before altering custody.

The Court of Appeals agreed with Mother that the lack of a best-interest analysis was a problem. It affirmed the finding of a material change but vacated the adoption of the new parenting plan and remanded the case for the trial court to perform the proper analysis:

Although the trial court found that the modified plan was in the child’s best interest, it gave no indication as to how and why it reached that conclusion…. [T]he court’s findings should demonstrate consideration of the relevant factors. As Father admits, that is not the case here. So we vacate the court’s adoption of Father’s proposed parenting plan.

Thus, everything was affirmed except the new parenting plan, which requires only the trial court to make detailed findings regarding the best-interest factors.

K.O.’s Comment: This case is an example of how moving out of state doesn’t automatically free you from a Tennessee court. Under the UCCJEA, Tennessee holds on to jurisdiction until those connections and evidence really dry up. Here, Mother lived in Arkansas for a year and a half, but Father was still in Tennessee, and the child had spent the majority of her life here. Significant connections remained: extended family in Tennessee, summers and holidays here, even medical history and prior incidents of domestic violence were tied to Tennessee. That wasn’t nearly long enough or far enough removed for Tennessee to lose jurisdiction. The takeaway for lawyers and parents is that under the UCCJEA, you need more than just a new address in another state to get a new court.

Source: Hibdon v. Goynes (Tennessee Court of Appeals, Middle Section, December 18, 2025).

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